1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the distribution of a telephone call across multiple buyers or agents. In particular, non-limiting embodiments of the invention apply to sales organizations where calls are distributed to multiple buyers or agents.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a customer calls into a telephone number seeking a potential service provider (e.g., call-buyer) either through direct dial or brokered by a warm call transfer agent or transferred ‘blind’ by an agent without any 3-party warm introduction, speed is of the essence in terms of decreasing customer hold times and helping to foster a positive emotional state in the mind of the caller. Being able to call out to multiple potential buyers in a near simultaneous manner, staggered manner, or prioritized manner is important. This applies both across competing customers within the same service category, as well as within a company across multiple competing sales agents. In both situations, people are competing to speak with the caller. If everyone were to receive the caller's phone number, everyone would have sufficient information to contact the customer and the value of the caller's information is therefore diminished by the act of transmitting their phone number. Current call marketplace technology is setup for single buyer distribution, or if multiple potential buyers are involved, those systems will sequentially call one call-buyer at a time to try to control the distribution of information and related reduction of value as caller information is presented to multiple buyers. If the caller information is not disclosed, a static or constant number is used in place of all callers' telephone numbers for a given marketing campaign and this same static number is displayed to all competing buyers or competing agents for all calls facilitated on the marketing campaign. When a competing buyer requires geographical information that is normally conveyed by a caller's telephone number to properly route calls, these static or constant phone number calls typically must be connected in a staged method wherein a receptionist or call screening person must answer the call to then properly route the call internally with the buyer organization.
A type of call may be either: i) a “live transfer”/“warm call transfer,” meaning a call transferred by a call center agent who introduces the caller to a different agent before dropping off the call; or ii) a directly-dialed consumer call, where the caller dials the number and is directly connected to the sales agent or iii) a “blind transfer” meaning a call transferred by a call center agent into an additional call distribution path without providing any introduction between the caller and the receiving agent. In these types of calls, call suppliers/generators typically will pass one of the following options as the caller identification (Caller ID) telephone number:
Actual Caller ID Number of the Caller: The caller's telephone number is transmitted directly as-is. This is the most common occurrence for a call that is initiated directly by a consumer dialing into an advertised telephone number that is directly connected with an advertiser.
Alternative Caller ID: Advertising Campaign Specific Phone number—a static caller ID number such as 800-555-1234 that represents the specific advertised phone number (advertising campaign phone number); Fixed Caller ID Number Mask—a static telephone number used for a grouping of calls or advertising campaigns, e.g., a fixed caller ID number used by a warm call transfer call center for all or a designated category or group of their transfers; and Restricted or Blank Caller ID—the caller ID phone number is blank and may show Restricted as the caller ID name.
Several key limitations exist with the current state of caller ID transmission relating to the selling of phone calls across multiple competing call-buyers. Once a consumer's telephone number is displayed to a prospective call-buyer's telephone or telephone system, a record of that call attempt exists in the prospective call-buyer's telephone system call log. Therefore, the indication of interest and the means of contacting that consumer have been transmitted to the prospective call-buyer even if the prospective call-buyer does not answer the phone or answers the phone but does not press a key to accept the call. For example, if the call is offered to five (5) buyers, and is awarded and sold to one (1) of those five (5) buyers, the non-winning four (4) buyers have received the expression of interest from this consumer and the means of contacting the caller outside of the call supplier's call tracking system, therefore diluting the value to the ‘awarded’ buyer who purchased the call and preventing the call supplier from monetizing the follow-up call-backs the four (4) non-winning buyers may make to the caller outside of the call supplier's call tracking system.
If instead, the call supplier offers the call to only a single buyer or agent, then the caller is subjected to potentially long hold times or will be passed into voicemail. The shorter the hold time prior to connecting two parties, the higher the connection success rate, as defined by two parties engaged in conversation. The longer the hold time prior to connecting two parties, the lower the connection success rate. With longer hold times, the dropped call percentage increases as consumers who grow weary hang-up prior to being connected. Consumers who are connected faster are also in a better emotional state than those who wait on hold for a long time. Consumers who wait a long time on hold become fatigued and are less likely to engage in a productive sales conversation.
Another approach to solve for the dissemination of the consumer's expression of interest and the means of contacting the consumer is to use a static Alternative Caller ID telephone number. Several limitations of this approach exist. Call Reconciliation Accounting: The call-buyer does not have a straightforward means of discussing specific calls with the call supplier because multiple calls on call-buyer's call log share the same alternative caller ID number. This makes reconciliation of qualified call counts and the discussion and follow-up transactions related to the specific calls and the set of calls inordinately difficult. Further, when you want to allow multiple buyers to compete for the call, e.g. speed to press a key competitions, the problem of tracking activity becomes compounded. Call Geographic Distribution: If the call-buyer depends on using geography of the caller's telephone number, e.g., the area code, for the purpose of automated call distribution/routing to different geographically disparate sales offices or agents, the static caller ID alternative approach does not transmit any information about the geography of the caller.